Bento at Mount Fuji

My daughter took me out for lunch (she had a tax rebate) and we decided to go to Mount Fuji. Don't get excited, we didn't fly out to Japan, it's the name of a bento restaurant in Birmingham. Not a huge place but very nice and the view from the window is nice too, although some may say it was nicer before they built the new Spiceal  Street and blocked of the view of the lovely old St Martin's church.

I love bento, it's like being a child again. At school we would have these weird looking trays with compartments  for our food. Of course bento boxes are much nicer than the old school trays and the food is nicer (and healthier) but the concept of compartmentalised food is similar.

I chose a sweet and sour chicken bento and my daughter went for chicken teriyaki bento. We both had green tea but mine was hot and hers was cold (by choice)

The food arrived in a gorgeous polished wooden box, and when I took the lid off it looked like this;

I grabbed my chopsticks and tucked in. The rice was lovely and fluffy and the chicken delicious although not very sweet and sour. All the other bits were nice too, the cute piece of corn on the cob was a lovely addition as was the green beans in a soft creamy marinade. It was really filling too.

Now this post is sounding like a review when really I just wanted to write about my day out with my daughter, I guess the food took over. 

We did have a lovely day though, after lunch we took a walk around the indoor markets, she bought some buttons and I bought some fresh chicken fillets. 

The Hoarder in Me

Last night I watched the first in the series of the The Hoarder Next Door, channel4. The two people featured had homes that you really couldn't move around in because of all the stuff they had hoarded. How can people live like that? Why don't they throw it all away? If only the answers were so simple as the questions.
I have hoarding tendencies. I find it so hard to throw things away, some things are harder than others. I'm sure most people have memorabilia, keepsakes they would never part with, they may be valuable or not, it doesn't matter. Usually these relate to babies, or loved ones that have passed away. I still have my dad's bible and he passed away over 30 years ago. I have things from all of my kids when they were babies, clothing, toys, drawings, certificates etc. I also have things that belonged to my mum and younger brother. These things have no use to me now, they just hold cherised memories which I won't let go.
So where does it go from there to being a totally crazy hoarder who puts useless objects above everything, even being able to wash or cook in their own homes?
I get attached to items. I will acquire something and think that even though I don't need it now it will be useful one day, six years later it's still sitting unopened in the cupboard. I'll use something for years and then either replace it or get something better but it's still a wrench to get rid of the original. Now if it's something large, like a vaccuum cleaner or washing machine, that's fine, it can go, but if it's something smaller, like a kitchen gadget, then it can be stored.
I guess that still doesn't sound so bad does it? Nowhere near those hoarders on the tv program.
 Let's talk about boxes. I have a thing about boxes, I don't know why or where it came from but I can't just get rid of them. Big, small, ugly, pretty, so long as they are intact they are ok to stay. I have got better over the years and that's down to recycling. Somehow putting boxes in the recycling bin is not as bad as throwing them out. I still have to keep them for a day or two though and then they can go. Over the years the boxes have been useful, I've always got boxes for storage or transporting things, and the kids have made some fantastic sculptures, villages, robots etc from them.
Another thing is books, I have hundreds of them both read and unread but parting with them is so difficult. Some I've read over and over, and some I know I will read again, but some are just taking up space. I try to reduce my stash, sometimes I take them to the charity shop. I couldn't just throw them out that would be just wrong. I try not to buy books now, I borrow from the library mostly. I suppose a kindle would help but the books I already have would still be here, and I couldn't promise not to buy any more.
At present I feel I can control my hoarding. The stuff I really really need to keep gets stashed away so it's not on view (apart from the books on my bookshelf) and I do have regular clear outs when some of it will go. I try really hard not to add to it too. As I said, I have control, but the urges pull and I know I could easily lose control.
If I lived alone I know it would be more difficult to control.

More Cake

I made another cake last week, for a little girl's first birthday. I was asked to make a Dee Li cake and sent a picture from the program Wayballoo.

The cake was fairly easy to make. First I made a 7" round cake and then I used a 1lb loaf tin to make the second cake. This needed a bit of shaping so I'm thinking I may have been better off just making a square cake and cutting it out. I'll keep that in mind for next time.
I covered the cakes with white icing and cut out the figure from coloured icing. The pupils and eyelashes I painted with food colouring but they did bleed a little so in future I would make some thing icing to pipe, or buy some writing icing as I tend to get the consistency wrong when I make it myself. To finish off I piped shells around the edges, and wrote a little plaque. I also made a flower candle holder out of icing, it's good to do something like this a few days in advance and leave to harden a little, when the icing is too soft anything you push into it will move around.

Here is the photo;

I don't currently have any cakes ordered at the moment. The next cake I think will be for our Jubilee party/BBQ so probably a Union Flag cake unless I come up with something more original ???

10 Things I learnt at Blog Camp!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend BlogcampUk arranged by Tots100 and the lovely Sally Whittle.
This is what I learnt;
Lesson 1: Four flights of stairs gives you a good cardio workout. Seriously I had to wait 5 minutes until I could breathe normally again when I finally arrived at Blogcamp on the second floor of The Studio in Birmingham. Now, I'm not an unfit person (really?) but I have been glued behind a pushchair for the last six years and therefore always use a lift, so stairs are a bit of a novelty for me.

Lesson 2: You should read your schedule as soon as it is given to you. If I had done this I'd have known that the first talk started at 10.30am not 10am and as I am quite obsessive about being on time I did spend 1/2 hour wondering when everyone else was going to come into the room and park their bums. I would also have realised that the talk I most wanted to go to had been cancelled :-(

Lesson 3: It's ok to change your blog if that's what it needs. I'm not good with changes and in the past I've been known to start a new blog rather than change the one I've got (probably why I have four blogs now). Change is ok, change is ok, change is ok.....I get it, one blog already revamped. Did you know you can even change your blog name and url on Blogger without losing your hard work? I also learned that it's ok to have more than one blog...phew! Thanks Bangs and a Bun!

Lesson 4: I don't drink as much coffee as I thought. There was plenty of coffee at Blogcamp and it was good. I always thought I spent most of my day sat on my bum gulping back coffee (ha, if only) but with a cup of coffee at every opportunity left me all coffee'd out and I actually reached my max!

Lesson 5: Don't be a Dick! This was the most talked about slide of the day, and in fact was so important it was shown twice. As a person who worries about what people say and think all the time I thought the talk on How to be a Snark would help. Stu Heritage, snark tiger, looked like a little pussycat in front of a room full of oestrogen (his term not mine) but he still gave us a very amusing and informative talk about how to get away with being a snark, and when to back out. Glad I didn't miss this one, and he was rather nice looking (or is that just the oestrogen talking?)

Lesson 6: Lunch was free! And it was rather nice too with plenty to choose from. In fact we were really looked after all day with coffee on tap, water (in bottles), pastries for breakfast, buffet lunch, biscuits and yummy cakes.....quick break time for a cake pic!

Lesson 7: I learnt what all those buttons mean on a camera and picked up some good tips on how to take a good photo. My daughter will be pleased, I only said the other day that I needed a new camera and she retorted 'no mum, you just need to learn how to take a photo!' Well daughter, lesson learnt. Thank you Daddy Pig, aka John Arnold from PhotoWalkthrough

Lesson 8: I discovered Pic Monkey an online photo editor and how easy it is to use. Yes, we do have photoshop, I bought it for my daughter (yes, I bought it!) but I can't use it. I have tried. PicMonkey is a great little tool and I think my boring bad photo's will be getting some tweaking done very soon.

Lesson 9: PRs are actually quite nice, when sat meekly in front of an audience of 100 bloggers with fire coming out of their ears! I've only just recently been getting approached by PRs so I was a little naive in this session but learnt lots and next time I get an e-mail from a PR I'm not going to delete thinking they've got the wrong person, I might just give them a chance.

Lesson 10: You can't fit in everything and are likely to miss the most buzzed about talk of the day. I did, I missed the Follow, No-Follow talk which really created a stir. However, from what I picked up from talking to others it was about this http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569 which I think explains it fairly well. And if you are on Blogger and want to no-follow a link there is a handy little box to tick, whoopee!

Finally, I learnt that Bloggers Rock! (when they are not being dicks!)

I'm Going To Blog Camp

Only 100 tickets were available and I managed to get one, so on Saturday I'm off to the wonderful city of Birmingham to meet up with other Bloggers at Blog Camp Uk.
Ok, I live in Birmingham so it's only a short bus ride away, but I'm still excited. So This is me,

so if you are going too you will already know what I look like.

I have this blog which is for more personal stuff, sometimes I share too much but I find it easy to share on my blog. I also have a blog for my babies Baby No5 yes, I have five of them, but they are not all babies, but they are still all at home. Then there is my business blog Bump To Bundle which is linked to my baby shop which I started up while pregnant with baby no 5. Finally, well not really  but more about that in a mo, there is my reviews and competitions blog because I like to write reviews and enter competitions but didn't want to to clog up my other blogs. And Finally, finally, this blog is currently in hibernation but I wanted to mention it because it's a great hobby of mine. I've not been Geocaching for a while but I am hoping to get back into it very soon so Finding Boxes will be revived.

I told you I share too much ;-)

Just one more thing, I've hear there will be cake at Blog Camp.......here's one I made earlier

Yes, another hobby of mine is baking and decorating cakes......there may even be a new blog on the horizon. (First I need a few more hours in the day)



See you Saturday :-)

Birthday Cake

As I've said before, I like making and decorating cakes so I was thrilled to be given free range on a cake for my niece's 20th birthday. I know she's a pink girl so the dominant colour just had to be pink, and I know she loved the feathers on her sister's cake that I made last year so I got some pink feathers for the topper. I decided that I'd have a go at making a two tier cake for the first time. The bottom half chocolate and the top vanilla. The chocolate cake stuck to the pan and I lost half of it (me and Graham had the pieces with custard later) so I had to make another half a cake. It turned out to be a pretty good size in the end. And I learnt a lesson, you still need lining with silicone cake pans. The top half came out well but after putting it all together I was thinking maybe I should have gone for a smaller but taller cake. Something to keep in mind for next time.
So I thought about the top cake sinking into the bottom one and I knew you could use dowels but I thought I'd give it a google to see if there were any alternatives. I discovered that for a two tiered cake you could use drinking straws so I gave them a go. I think they worked pretty well, there was no sinking anyway.
The bottom cake I covered with pink icing and decorated with lilac stripes. My eldest complained that I should have had them all symmetrical but I wanted slightly larger gaps between the lines at the front so I could fit on the greetings plaques. I'd been asked for a long greeting so decided to split it over two plaques. The top cake I covered with a darker pink and I wanted to put lilac hearts around the side but it turned out a little too short and they wouldn't fit, so I embossed a pattern and put the hearts on the top. (Hence my thinking a smaller and taller cake would have been better)
The topper I made with silver foil coated thin wire, diamante numbers and the pink feathers. It cost me about £12 to make and took me nearly 3 days.

Mothers Day

yep I'm late :-)
I don't really like Mother's Day. It makes me feel sad because I no longer have a mother, but it goes back longer because I have also spent five years in the past estranged from my mum. Those were awful times, I missed her so much but felt so let down and deserted by her. Every Mother's Day I would browse the cards in the shops and the sentiments inside them made me feel empty and lost. Then in 2005 I picked up a card with no long poetry or soppy sentiment, it just plainly stated have a lovely day. In it I wrote, 'I miss you mum' and I gave it to my auntie (because I had no idea where my mum was living) Two weeks later I had a letter from mum and then we shared a phone call, and eventually, just a few days before my daughter was born I met up with her at a summer fete.
I'm glad I had those few years making up with mum. Of course losing her was twice as hard, but I think it would have been difficult in a different way if we hadn't made up, and not something I'd like to dwell on. So this year mum got her usual bunch of flowers and we had a chat by her grave side.

As for me, mum of five...well, it feels kind of mean to say it but my family let me know on a daily basis what they think of me so why should I expect anything different on Mother's day? At least the girls made me cards at school. On Mother's day they were oblivious, which I don't mind, they are so young. I suppose when I hear friends speak of their children the same ages having a go at making them breakfast, or choosing flowers with their daddies it stings a little, but not much. The eldest found the day difficult. I think he wanted to get me something but hadn't organised himself enough to do so. He was very out of sorts all day and I got lots of hugs. The eldest daughter said nothing, did nothing. So what! I'm used to it.

I guess the most hurt came from G. I woke him before going to church and he said he was going to get up and do all the housework. Nice thought. I'd been up four hours already, done housework, put washing on, prepared dinner and finished the icing on his mum's cake I had made. We got back from church after a little shopping at 12.30pm. He was still in bed. He got up and went around his mum's by 1pm. He didn't come back until 3pm. I was livid, but said nothing. What's the point? Then he told me how a neighbour had collapsed and he'd called an ambulance and she was so ill he didn't think she was going to make it. I made all the right noises but struggled inside because I couldn't believe him, I just felt it was another of his 'stories' to excuse him being gone so long. All day I felt truly terrible for our neighbour and guilty for thinking that I didn't believe him, not a good feeling, very mixed up I guess you could say. Anyway, the rest of the day passed, just one little outburst from eldest which I was waiting for because I could tell he was worked up.

Today, I saw seriously ill neighbour at the shops. She was fine. Yes she'd had a scare but it turned out to be nothing serious. From our conversation I gathered she'd not see G on Sunday, but I'm not 100% because I didn't ask her outright.

Just another day in my life.